The Crow of Connemara

by Stephen Leigh

  “I already—” he began.

  She wouldn’t let him finish the sentence, putting a finger on his lips. “No,” she said. “’Tis enough said for now. I’ll see yeh again in two days, an’ we’ll talk more then. Right now, let’s just be here, together, for the wee bit of time we have.”

  20

  Blow the Candle Out

  INISHCORR SEEMED LIKE a fading dream.

  Mrs. Egan gave Colin a sour, sidewise glance from the kitchen when he walked into her house that morning, wet from the passage over from Inishcorr and lugging his guitar and backpack. He’d told her only that he’d be staying with a friend for a few days. From her look, it was apparent that she knew—or at least suspected—where he’d actually been.

  “’Morning, Mrs. Egan,” he called to her through the intervening dining room. He heard a sniff as an answer. The dirtied dishes and crumbs on the table told him that the other guests at the bed and breakfast had already eaten and gone about their day. “I’ll be taking my things up to my room. Is there still breakfast, or should I get something in town? I don’t want to put you out.”

  Another sniff. “Them Oileánach didn’t feed yeh, eh? ’Tis too like ’em.” There was a clatter of dishes. “Put your things away, then. I’ll cook yeh up some eggs and a bit of toast and jam.”

  Ten minutes later, Mrs. Egan plunked down in front of him a large plate of eggs, toast, and bacon, as well as a pot of tea. She sat across the table, watching as he ate. “I told yeh before,” she said after a long silence. “There’s no good to come from the Oileánach. But yeh would’nah listen to me.”

  “I can tell you that the Oileánach are just people, Mrs. Egan,” Colin responded. “No worse and no better than anyone else. They’re not bothering anyone here, out on their island as they are.”

  “That shows how little yeh know,” Mrs Egan insisted. “Patrick Davies was saying that his cows haven’t given milk in a week, not since one a’ them was haggling with him over his prices. Mrs. Naughton said that after an Oileánach walked past her house one evening, there were lights twinkling all around the fairy mound in her field for the whole night, and she could hear the wee folk making music and singing. The next morning, all the flowers had been pulled from her window boxes. Her cats were cowering in the shed and wouldn’t come out, and when they did, they looked all bedraggled like they’d been ridden all night long. Then there’s poor Mrs. Brennan—”

  Her face was so serious that Colin forced down the laugh that threatened. “I know,” he said instead. “Mrs. Brennan twisted her ankle. Mrs. Egan, begging your pardon, but I happened to be there when Mrs. Brennan ran into Maeve, and Maeve never cursed her, only made a meaningless gesture to make her think she’d been hexed. The fact she twisted her ankle was entirely an accident, nothing more than that.” He stopped, remembering that Maeve had also told him that Mrs. Brennan would twist her ankle. That didn’t seem something to mention.

  “So ’tis ‘Maeve’? Yeh know her so well now?”

  “I know her better than I did before, yes. And I have to say I like her.”

  “That may be,” Mrs. Egan answered with another sniff. “An’ yeh might be hexed just like Mrs. Brennan. I know what I hear, and there are plenty folks hereabout who have tales about strange things since the Oileánach have shown up. Things out of old tales, things that shouldn’t be walking.” She pressed her lips together as she shook her head. “Yeh like the old songs,” she added. “Do yeh never think of what they say about those who sleep with the fey?”

  To that, he had no answer.

  “I’m not sure I can use yeh tonight, Colin,” Lucas said. “Sorry for the late notice.”

  Lucas had stopped Colin the following morning as he walked down from Mrs. Egan’s to where her drive met the Sky Road, which wound from Ceomhar Head to the main square of Ballemór. Given the distance of the Egan house from its neighbors and the main section of Ballemór, Colin suspected that this was no casual meeting, that Lucas had been coming up to Mrs. Egan’s with the intention of talking to him. “Is there a problem?” Colin asked him. “I thought things were working out pretty well with me in the group.”

  “Nah problem,” Lucas answered, but his gaze was fixed somewhere past Colin’s left shoulder. “Yeh sounded grand. In fact, I have to admit that it’s true magic when yeh sing. The audience notices, and I hate to give that up.” He rubbed his head, as if trying to scratch away the last comment. “It’s just that . . . well, Regan’s is wantin’ a smaller group with the size of the stage and all, and I’ve been playing with the others longer, so . . .” He shrugged. “Yeh see how ’tis.”

  “Yeah. I’m pretty sure I do,” Colin told him.

  Lucas didn’t seem to notice the sarcasm Colin couldn’t hold back, or he chose to ignore it. He extended his hand. “Well, good, then. Yeh’ll have a fine career with that gift yeh have. I’ll give yeh a call when something else comes up. Promise.”

  “You do that,” Colin told him. He gave Lucas’ hand a brief shake. Afterward, Lucas rubbed his palm on his jeans, tugged at the sleeves of his sweater and pulled his cap farther down on his head. He gave Coin a lukewarm, uncertain smile and walked away, heading back down the hill toward the town. Colin decided he no longer wanted to go that way. He turned back and instead headed up the slope, his hands jammed into his pockets, a slow anger burning in his stomach, and a dozen unspoken rejoinders to Lucas ringing in his head.

  After Mrs. Egan’s comments and getting sacked by Lucas, he was beginning to wonder whether his trip to Inishcorr hadn’t been a terrific mistake. Maybe it was simply time to move on; after all, he’d been in Ballemór for a few weeks now, and there were still a hundred places in Ireland he’d like to see. He could go on up the coast to Mayo, Sligo, and Donegal, or down the other way to Clare, Limerick, and Kerry, or, he thought as he put his hand in his pocket and felt the stone with its silver cage and chain there, he could retrace the steps his grandfather Rory had taken and see the places he’d mentioned in his journal. There were pubs everywhere where he could hear music and play along with the local folk—it seemed that you couldn’t throw a pebble in Ireland without hitting a pub. There were a thousand people out there whose memories he could dredge for old tunes and lyrics. He could start writing that paper he’d been thinking about for a few years now, exploring the linkage between Celtic music and Appalachian folk songs.

  He didn’t have to stay here. If his welcome had been worn out, it would take him less than half an hour to pack his things at Mrs. Egan’s and move on. He could run away from Ballemór and the Oileánach and Maeve . . . as his father might have said that he’d run away from his obligations and his future at home.

  A raven cawed at him from the branch of a nearby tree, a hulking black presence on a branch of a weather-bent and stunted oak. The bird’s harsh cry shook him from his reverie, and he realized he was walking in the heather-laden grass high above the Sky Road near the standing stone on the cliffs of Ceomhar Head, with the lower slopes stretched out below him, hazy and bleeding into the cold gray-blue of the ocean. Strong gusts were coming in off the sea, pushing ragged clouds with them that tossed down a cold drizzle. His jeans were damp nearly to the knees, his sneakers and socks sodden. The wind plucked at his cap and sweater, making him squint. The raven cawed again, as if trying to get his attention, and he turned to glare back at the bird. “You just shut the hell up,” he said.

  The bird shivered and flapped its wings, its long, thick beak clacking. Then it dropped heavily from the branch, its wings pumping once to gather air before turning in the wind. As it passed over Colin, it dropped a splatter of thick white excrement on his shoulder. Colin cursed again as the bird cawed and glided down the slope toward a stand of trees. He saw it settle there. “Fuck you!” he shouted into the wind. He grabbed a clump of the heather and rubbed at his sweater; it only spread out the stain. He thought he heard a muffled laugh behind him, but when he turned, there was
no one there.

  I’ll see you again in two days, Maeve had said. It didn’t matter—she’d also told him that she felt no claim on him. Fine. He was free to leave. He should leave. He’d become caught up in a stupid local feud, and he didn’t need the drama or the indigestion. Maybe the bird was trying to tell him something.

  The oak groaned, as if in pain, and Colin glanced back at it. The lower branches were swaying in the rising wind, creaking. “It hurts, doesn’t it?” he said to the tree. “I can understand that. But I haven’t put down roots here. I’m free to leave. I am. I don’t have to stay. I shouldn’t stay.”

  The words did nothing to convince him. The oak groaned again. Colin could see sheets of rain approaching, marching toward the land like gray curtains; already the islands closest to the shore and the end of the peninsula were lost in them. He shivered and tugged his cap tighter against his head. He started back down, wondering if he could reach Mrs. Egan’s before the storm found him.

  As it turned out, he couldn’t.

  He was well-drenched by the time he reached Mrs. Egan’s porch, though at least the rain had scrubbed away the worst of the raven droppings. He could barely see through his glasses, which were running with water. His sweater seemed to weigh nearly as much as himself, hanging in sad folds and weeping from the bottom hem. His socks squelched noisily with every step. The rain was still pelting down hard, driven by gales so vicious that rain sometimes appeared to be falling horizontally. The planks of the porch were wet all the way to the side of the house. “Och!” Mrs. Egan said, opening the door as he ran up the steps, trying to shake off the worst of it. “Jus’ a moment, dear . . .” Colin saw someone behind her—not one of the other residents that he recognized: a thin scarecrow of a man, with a flash of white at his collar.

  Mrs. Egan came bustling out with two large towels, which he took gratefully, taking off his cap and glasses and rubbing his head and face. “The weather caught yeh, did it? I should’a warned yeh; I felt it coming in me joints. Well, come in, come in. I already have the kettle on for tea . . .”

  Colin took off his shoes and socks on the porch, wrapped the towels around himself, and entered the narrow entranceway. The man he’d glimpsed behind Mrs. Egan was there, smiling sympathetically at the sight of the drenched Colin: a priest, he noted—middle-aged, with brown hair liberally touched with white and beginning to thin at the crown. Mrs. Egan was sliding past him toward the kitchen. “Colin, this is Father James Quinlan, from St. Joseph’s,” she said. “He stopped by and was caught in the weather, too.”

  “Good to meet you, Father,” Colin said, taking the hand the man extended; it was like shaking a bone-infested piece of fresh cod, and Colin released it quickly. “Give me a few minutes and I’ll be back down . . .”

  “Certainly,” the priest said. “It wouldn’t do to get Mrs. Egan’s rugs all damp.”

  By the time Colin came back down, Father Quinlan and Mrs. Egan were ensconced at the dining room table drinking tea. She’d lit several candles on the table against the gloom of the day. “Sit,” Mrs. Egan said, pouring a steaming cup in front of one of the empty seats. “A rain like this just seeps into yer very bones.” As Colin sat, Mrs. Egan shot a glance at Father Quinlan, then her attention wandered to the window of the room, where sheets of water were being tossed at the rattling panes. She pointed to the picture of her brother on the mantel of the fireplace. “It was storming just like this the night that Darcy died,” she said, and shivered.

  “Indeed ’twas,” the priest agreed. Colin decided not to mention that Mrs. Egan said that every time it stormed. He lifted his cup to his lips, sipped, and set it down again. “So, Colin,” Father Quinlan continued. “Mrs. Egan tells me that yer Catholic, but I ca’nah say I’ve seen yeh at Mass.”

  Colin could feel both of them staring at him. He felt like a child ambushed by his parents after receiving a bad report card. “I was raised Catholic,” he told the priest. “St. Ann’s parish in Chicago. Went to parochial schools all the way through high school. But I’ve kind of lost the habit of going to church over the years.”

  “But yeh still believe, don’t yeh?” the man persisted.

  “I suppose so. Honestly, Father, I haven’t given church much thought over the last several years.” That wasn’t precisely true. As he’d told Maeve, he’d lost his faith in high school and had never found it again. He wasn’t certain he could call himself a complete atheist, but he was certainly agnostic. His father had brought up Colin’s lack of church attendance regularly since that time, and he’d (somewhat grudgingly) been a “C&E Catholic” while living in Chicago, going to Mass with the family on Christmas and Easter because it was expected and because that’s what the family did; once he moved out to Seattle for school, he gave up even that pretense.

  He could imagine poor Father Quinlan on Inishcorr, trying to convince Maeve and the Oileánach that they should come to church. It wasn’t a pretty image.

  The priest was nodding as if deciding what to say next; Mrs. Egan clucked once reproachfully. “That’s why the Oileánach are especially dangerous for yeh,” she said. “Why, ’twas only our faith that saved the good Father and me that night at Darcy’s, with the very hounds of hell carousing ’round the house.”

  With Mrs. Egan’s comment, the shutters all slammed hard against the west side windows of the house. Broken glass chimed against hardwood floors as rain and the wind blew freely into the dining room, toppling over the china figurines Mrs. Egan had placed on a buffet table underneath the window and blowing out the candles. The lace curtains flapped and fluttered like white, grasping hands. The hissing of the gale through the broken panes almost sounded like laughter.

  Mrs. Egan cried out in distress as Father Quinlan and Colin lurched from their chairs. Colin rushed outside with Father Quinlan to help resecure the agitated, swaying shutters. The rain cut off as if a celestial faucet had been turned, though the wind still screamed through the trees surrounding the house, making them bend and sway. “Look here,” Father Quinlan half-shouted against the din. “The wind’s torn loose the clamps. Help me close the shutters over the window for the time being, Colin, and we’ll get something to cover the broken windows until Mrs. Egan can get them repaired. Then we can help her clean up the mess.”

  But Mrs. Egan wasn’t cleaning. When they went back into the house after securing the outside, they found Mrs. Egan standing in the midst of shards of broken glass and china. She was staring at the center of the table with her hands to her face. “Father . . .” she said, pointing with a finger that trembled visibly.

  In the middle of the table was the photograph of Darcy in its frame, sitting perfectly centered as if someone had carefully placed it there, facing the window. “I was watching the two of yeh dealin’ with the shutters. I started to go get me broom, an’ I turned around and there was Darcy a’smiling at me.”

  Father Quinlan crossed himself. “’Tis only the wind,” he said. “A gust toppled it from the mantle, and an angel was looking out for your dear departed Darcy and made sure the picture landed there safely, that’s all, ’tis all.” Father Quinlan glanced at Colin. “Would yeh not agree, Colin?”

  Colin stared at the picture, at Darcy’s smiling face. The man seemed almost to be laughing at him. “Yeah,” he said. “That must be it.”

  21

  The Fairy Ring

  “HEY.”

  The call was so soft that Colin thought he might have imagined it. He turned, and saw Maeve leaning against an oak tree at the edge of Mrs. Egan’s property, wearing a long skirt and a loose, red sweater, her dark hair down and falling over the shoulders. He grinned, seeing her, then glanced back toward the house. “Hey, yourself,” Colin answered.

  “I see yeh haven’t left yet.”

  He felt his cheeks growing hot, as if she’d somehow overheard his musings of the other day. “Did you think I was going to do that?” he asked her, and she shrugged w
ithout answering. She took a step forward out of the shadows. “Y’know, if Mrs. Egan sees you here on her property, she’s going to have a fit. She’ll be calling the gardai on you.”

  Maeve’s laugh was quicksilver. It wrapped around him and drew him toward her. She hugged him, giving him a fleeting peck on the cheek, but turned her head when he tried to make it more. She held him nearly at arm’s length, then released him entirely. “Yer Mrs. Egan doesn’t worry me a’tall,” she said. “Besides, her dining room window’s boarded up at the moment, ain’t it? She won’t be looking out it.”

  The comment brought Colin back to yesterday’s storm, and the strange occurrence with Darcy’s picture. He felt a roiling in his gut as he looked at her. “How’d you know that?”

  “Why d’yeh ask?” she answered. She gazed at him coyly. “Yeh think I had something to do with it?”

  “Did you?”

  Her smile came and vanished, like the sun slipping behind fast-racing clouds. “Someone who believes in the Papist God wouldn’t believe that possible—or they’d attribute it to the devil or something equally gacky.”

  “You’re not answering my question.”

  “I’m thinking yeh already know the answer, but yer asking only because yeh need to pretend yeh don’t.” She held out her hand to him. “Come on. I promised yeh a talk. Let’s take a stroll, the two of us, and we can have that chat.”

  He hesitated, then took her hand. She led him away from the house and farther up the slopes into a tangle of trees and brush, moving along winding, narrow trails that he couldn’t see himself but that she seemed to find easily. They crossed two quick streams running down the headland, nearly hidden underneath the heather. He was panting as he followed her, though the climb didn’t seem to bother Maeve. Finally, she paused in a small open glade sheltered by oaks and hawthorns; there, he saw a small earthen mound, an outcropping of gray rocks speckled with moss thrusting through the loam blanketing it. Around the mound was a ring of slightly-raised earth, as if there’d once been a low wall surrounding the hillock, now pressed down and cushioned with centuries of loam and grass. Maeve sat on one of the boulders, waiting as he straggled after her. “Yer fierce slow,” she said.